So, yesterday I had a visit to the Hematologist. I scheduled this about two weeks ago at the request of my regular doc because my white blood cell count is low.
I get there I check in I fill out forms, you know the usual, name, address, emergency contact, insurance blah, blah, blah…
My last name is one that sometimes has an S on the end and sometimes doesn’t. I happen to have the with with no S. The version with the S at the end is a bit more common. I notice that the receptionist refers to me as Ms. S but I don’t think anything about it because people do it all the time and I just usually let it slide.
So I’m in the examining room and the Dr. comes in and he refers to me as Ms. S and I start to let it slide like I usually do but he’s paging through my chart and he comes to the page that I filled out with my name and address and someone has handwritten an S at the end of my last name. I know there might have been some confusion when I called to make the appt. But did they think that I filled out the form wrong? Did they think that the name on my Driver License and Insurance card were wrong? Why would someone just add an S to my name because they assumed that’s what it should be? The mind boggles.
I told the Doc and he marked through it on the chart then the nurse who checked me out changed it in the computer system. We’ll see what happens when I return in 6 weeks.
I was going to put this in the Pit but I’m not angry so much as really amazed that someone would decide to arbitrarily rename me. Geez. :rolleyes:
[sub]BTW Since I don’t have any symptoms it’s assumed the low white cell count is nothing. I’m going back in 6 weeks just to make sure[/sub]
I have a friend whose name is Nikole–yes, with a k. She will fill out forms, etc and people send them back to her with a c, because, you know, clearly she is an idiot who spelled her own name wrong. Sounds like the two of you need some remedial classes or something. :rolleyes:
Yes, of course that’s it. I’m calling my mother and my brothers and sisters and letting them in on the secret. Turns out this is a family dysfunction and must be stopped. I just can’t believe someone didn’t let me in on the secret earlier. And here all this time I’ve been telling people they were spelling it wrong. :smack: What was I thinking?
Perhaps I should start a 12 step group. PWCSTONA )People Who Can’t Spell Their Own Names anonymous.) Your friend Nikole and I can be the charter members.
My first name has an unusual spelling, and all my life, I have had to put up with people mis-entering it. The loyalty program of my local bookstore has been incapable, despite numerous attempts on my part to correct it, of getting my name correct. Schools, governments, companies and even friends, insist on changing my name from how I write it.
I get people who INSIST on adding an H to my first name. It doesn’t have an H in it. the H spelling is rather more uncommon than the non H spelling. But they still insist on it.
The nickname that I go by has ONE K in it. Not two, no C or E or Y either. It’s four letters, plain and simple.
My best friend, whom I’ve known for about 10 years misspelled my last name recently. At least she was apologetic when I corrected her.
The receptionist just added an S even though there was plenty of official looking evidence that there was no S. Probably because it was originally entered that way in their computer system when the appt. was set.
Funny thing, my first name is Julie and you’d be surprised the number of times I’ve been asked if that’s spelled J-U-L-Y. I usually smile sweetly and say, “no, I-E”. Pointing out their stupidity by telling them that J-U-L-Y spells the month July would be impolite.
The moral of this story is that while I may not be able to spell my own name, I’m polite when I do it.
There is a variant of my last name that has an extra letter in it. It’s a silent extra letter, so it is never pronounced in the other name, both sound identical.
The thing is, both names are really uncommon names (the other is slightly more common, but still very rarely heard). There are a few here and there, but we’re not talking about “Christian” and “Cristian” or “Smith” and “Smithe.” Chances are (unless my parents or siblings are introducing me), I’m the only person of either last name that you’ve ever met. So, why it is copied from forms I’ve written with the extra letter added? Why when I spell my name does the listener unconciously add in the extra letter? Where does the overwhelming desire to spell my name wrong come from?
(At least no one has ever argued back that I was the one who made the mistake)
I get a lot of people adding an extra “e” to my last name. It always bugged me and I never knew why they did it. Doing a little sleuthing I found out that my last name probably originally had that “e” and it was somehow dropped in my particular branch of the family. Which sort of means we do spell it incorrectly, but gosh darn it that’s our privilege.
I’m a lucky guy! It’s impossible to misspell or mispronounce either of my names. Same thing with my brothers and sister. I’m so happy I haven’t had to spend my life spelling my name for people! I work in close proximity to three people whose phone conversations I can plainly overhear, and every single time they call anybody, they have to play the alphabet game. The woman across from me has a last name starting with O. She told me that since she married into that name, uncountable numbers of people want to think she’s Irish, and insist on putting an apostrophe after the O. There is none.
When I started out in radio 30 years ago, I used a pseudonym on the air, like so many others before me. The last name was Sanders. People had the uncontrollable urge to put a ‘U’ in it and call me Saunders, even though I never pronounced it that way. It used to irk me no end, so I have some idea of what you’re going through. You folks all have my empathy.
I can relate to this particular hassle in a slightly different way. My given name is uncommon, but because there have been a couple of well-known entertainers with this name, most people have heard it before, as a last name.
My last name is Swedish, and uncommon in this country (I’ve never run across another who wasn’t a relative), and it sure doesn’t sound like a first name to me. Nevertheless, all of my life I’ve had nurses, receptionists, anybody filling out a form, insist on trying to make my last name my first. Arghhh!
On a similar note, a good friend of mine used to live in Corpus Christi, Texas where he had a neighbor named Gonzales. His familial pronunciation used a long a as opposed to the soft a that every other occurrence of the name I’ve encountered uses. And it’s a common name in Texas. That poor guy had to address the problem daily. Double arghhh!
My given name is spelled with a “k”. A more or less equally common spelling of the same name is spelled with a “c”. Once in a while, I’ll even get it spelled with a “ck”. My mother thought that the German spelling with the k was more logical. I’m not sure that the evidence agrees with her. (Of course, there is a soap opera character with the “c” spelling of my name who has been around for a very long time, that probably does not help.)
At least twice this semester, I found myself clarifying the spelling of my name for someone who was taking notes on who the group members were for some little discussion that was quickly going to be forgotten. I’m sure if they ever need to know how to spell it, they won’t remember the correct spelling.
My first name is commonly spelled with an “h” at the end. My maiden name was “Hastings”. In Brownie Scouts, after I told the Troop leader that I didn’t have an “h” in my name, she replied “Your last name is Astings?”
I couldn’t believe it.
For fun, when I got a bit older, I’d spell my name with an “h” right in the middle, just to screw with people. Silent consonants are silly.
Renaming you? Pfeh! So what. Dumbasses kept marrying me to my housemate!
Apparently, a queer gal can’t live with a straight man without it being marriage. So I kept getting mail address to “Mrs. Roommate.” Housemate, Huffs_Glue, thought we must’ve had a really lousy wedding if we couldn’t remember it. I tended to think that we must’ve had a really, really fun wedding if we couldn’t remember it.
My last name has one T in it. Apparently everyone else with this name spells it with two Ts, as people always misspell it. I can tell peopl ehow to spell it, and they usually still put an extra T in.
My daughter’s name is Emma, and I can’t count the number of times I’ve been asked to spell it. It’s E-M-M-A, I don’t see how it’s that hard and I’ve never seen it spelled any other way. I didn’t subscribe to the “kree’atyve” method of baby naming.
